The Australian Government Leadership Network provides a valuable and important forum for public sector practitioners to discuss ideas, and share experiences.
I would like to commend the work you do and the role this network plays in improving the public sector.
The focus of this conference reflects the growing expectations of citizens and Governments of the public sector in a changing and challenging environment.
Meeting these expectations will require creativity and rigour.
Marrying innovation with implementation in an increasingly complex and changing world.
Putting citizens at the heart of service delivery.
Achieving outcomes in a fiscally constrained environment.
All these require leadership from the public sector.
The Right Stuff as this conference is titled.
As a Minister in a Government with a significant reform agenda, leadership in the public sector is vital to the successful implementation of our platform.
To this end, I announced the Better Government agenda late last year.
Today, Id like to briefly outline parts of that package and how I see leadership in the public sector as vital to delivering the Governments reform agenda.
About how innovation must go hand in hand with implementation.
And the discipline of operating in a fiscally restrained environment.
Better Government
Better Government is a broad theme.And it is an ongoing task.
For the community and citizens it is about meeting their expectations of government, in policy and delivery.
It is about the standards we set for ourselves as a government.
It is the goal of continual improvement.
Expectations on governments continue to grow with each generation.
And each generation of government must reform to meet that challenge.
Our Government is driven by a clear and strong vision for the future in Australia.
Better Government is about turning that vision into positive outcomes for people in their everyday lives.
It is combining purpose and innovation, with rigorous delivery.
Through the public service we articulate the policies and programs to deliver on our vision.
The public sector is the link between this vision and the community.
You design the policies and programs that will provide the services and grants, the incentives and support, and the opportunities to Australians.
It is the public sector on the front line delivering the services, providing the training and support.
This task is not easy.
The requirements of the community change, and the expectations usually increase.
In their everyday interactions with government, citizens expect high standards.
They dont expect perfection, but they do expect a rigorous and methodical approach to service delivery.
This Government is committed to effective program delivery vision, imagination and purpose in government will always disappoint if they are not backed by rigour.
We have great ambitions for this country. The realisation of these ambitions has to be supported by robust implementation.
Providing the tools for Better Government
Better Government is about improved outcomes for citizens.In the face of constantly changing public needs, and a constantly changing environment, the public sector needs to innovate and adapt.
The policies of the 1990s are unlikely to be the best response today, just as todays responses may not be the best responses in 2020.
As the community changes, the public sector and governments need to respond.
With this change invariably comes increased complexity.
Whether this is moving from a standard service to case management or using online data matching to better target government grants rather than broad, generic approach, expectations are that Government will adapt to citizens expectations.
Change in the community necessitates innovation in the APS. Innovation should be at the core of public sector activity.
This is not to say that we should be recreating the wheel.
Nor am I advocating change for changes sake.
But with increasingly complex and interconnected policy problems facing Government, whether it be childhood obesity or aged care, the existing policy prescriptions may no longer be valid.
Innovation in the public sector can be looking at a policy problem in a new way.
It could be utilising new academic research or adapting best practice from another jurisdiction.
Innovation can be using different levers, different incentives or programs, identifying creative ways to deliver better service outcomes for citizens.
Hand in hand with innovation must is the need for effective and efficient implementation.
This is vital.
And the Governments Better Government agenda is to encourage innovation and focus attention on efficient and effective implementation.
This includes building partnerships with academia, and not being afraid to engage with the community sector, unions and business.
Often engagement with other sectors is often thrown about as a means to drive innovation in the APS.
But I would strongly urge you to seek out meaningful engagement with the other sectors.
For example, the Governments response to the pay equity case for Social and Community Service workers demands positive engagement between government and the community sector.
We are working on ways to improve the way we do business with the community sector and vice versa.
The Better Government agenda also includes a renewed focus on learning and development across the public sector, ensuring that our people have the skills required to meet the future public policy challenges.
It includes streamlining the processes and rules that structure the work you do.
The internal operations of Government are being updated through the Commonwealth Financial Accountability Review (CFAR) to improve the frameworks in which you operate.
This review will look at the legislative basis for financial management, arrangements for compliance and risk management, and performance management.
By reducing APS red tape, this reform will enable more flexible approaches to policy, delivery and implementation.
There are currently discussion documents circulating in the APS before a full discussion paper is released later in the year.
It something that I would encourage all of you here today to play a part in.
In tandem with these reforms there are a number of targeted measures to focus on implementation.
Broadly stated, this is putting in place the systems and measures that will provide greater certainty around the implementation of programs.
The goal is to achieve change across the public sector that will improve the delivery of services and programs and give the Government and the public greater confidence that implementation is consistently efficient and effective.
This includes the introduction of Implementation Readiness Assessments and the piloting of Gateway reviews for programs.
These two reforms will provide additional assurance to Government and to responsible agencies that the right capabilities have been put in place, and that the programs will be brought online with the systems and process for success in place.
In an environment where the Government and the public are seeking more innovative and original policy solutions, the importance of these types of measures should not be understated.
They bring real world discipline to new policy design, and will give increased confidence to Government that a good policy will be a well delivered program. These initiatives are important elements, but it is effective leadership that draws them together in practice.
Tension can exist between these objectives.
A new program will often have higher implementation risks than the status quo, however flawed.
Robust implementation may temper some policy choices to better manage risk.
Managing these tensions is central to leadership in the APS.
It requires measured analysis, and rigorous assessment.
It requires an eye to effectively managing risk.
Above all it requires judgement.
Operating in a fiscally constrained environment
Managing the budget, but also pursuing efficiencies are two roles that intersect for me as Finance Minister.It means that looking at new, more efficient ways of delivering services is core business for me, and for all of you.
The Governments budget position is strong and our plan to deliver a budget surplus in 2012-13 is clear.
This required some tough choices in the last Budget, and will require more in the future.
However we do know that the medium term projections paint a different picture.
The latest Intergenerational Report shows that over the coming decades the growth in social welfare programs, for example, will grow at a rate above other government spending.
For example the Australian Governments expenditure on health per person is projected to increase more than three-fold over the 40 years to 204950.
This will see health care expenditure increase as a proportion of GDP from 4.0% in 2009-10 to 7.1% in 2049-50.
And as the population ages and the demography of Australia shifts, the burden on the next generation of taxpayers will become heavier.
A fiscally constrained environment should generate new ways to deliver on our priorities within existing funding.
Id urge you all, whether in a budget context, or a broader policy context, to consider new ways of doing the work you do to reduce costs freeing up funding for other, more valuable purposes.
A lot of the low hanging fruit has been picked but this only increases the need to take a more sophisticated and innovative approach to your task.
This goes beyond your obligations under the FMA Act, and your responsibilities under the Public ServiceAct.
It is about innovation and new thinking.
It could be using a new technology.
It could be about developing better management information to drive more efficient government operations.
It could be reducing red tape through better risk management, by standardising processes.
It could be about reducing illness in children to reduce the cost of care in adults.
It could be better targeting of assistance through the use of improved performance indicators, or the streamlining of an application process.
In all portfolios there are avenues to more efficient delivery and all of us should work towards that goal.
A lot has been achieved on this front already.
Since elected in 2007, our Government has been committed to achieving operational efficiencies across the public sector.
In aggregate they are substantial.
One of the key processes put in place was the coordinated procurement of government services.
The centralisation the procurement of travel services is good example. Through negotiating new supplier arrangements for departments and parliamentarians travel, the Government achieved savings of $160 million over four years.
This reform was buttressed by the Governments investment in Telepresence technology to provide alternate options to travel.
These two reforms provide an innovative solution to reduce government travel costs without reducing the effectiveness of communications.
These arent the types of reforms that grab headlines.
But we have taken seriously the need to have an efficient government.
Across the operations of Government significant resources have been freed up to re-direct to high Government priorities.
Close to $100 million from improving the management of Government property.
Over $1billion from ICT reforms.
Nearly $100 million annually from reforming advertising procurement.
This is funding that can re-directed to education, health or employment programs.
Back office shouldnt be the only area where efficiencies are sought.
This mind set can be transferred to policy areas.
Often the term efficiency is seen as a negative term of phrase it usually equates to cost cutting.
But efficiency is about seeing best outcomes achieved for a given set of resources.
It is about being focused on getting the best possible outcomes for the community, from a limited pool of Government funding.
Nowhere is this more important than in social policy.
As a Government and a community, we have a responsibility to ensure that these services are creating the best possible results for the people they are designed to assist.
As I mentioned before, the growth in social services will shift a significant burden on to the next generation.
This is a challenge that exists across the spectrum of social policy.
For this generation and the next, there are significant reforms required so that the services people expect are delivered.
Achieving greater efficiencies in the delivery of social services seems an obvious goal for a Finance Minister.
But more importantly, as a member of a Labor Government, I know that without putting these key social policy areas on a sustainable footing, the result will see services go backwards.
We are determined to maintain accessibility to services.
We are committed to ensuring that the most vulnerable do not go without.
Getting this right is at the core being a Labor government.
We work out how to deliver for people, not how to spend money on customers.
The challenge before this Government is how to deliver for this generation, and the next.
We need to look for new and innovative ways of providing services, of getting the best outcomes from finite resources.
We want to know that students are getting the best teachers, that the aged are getting the best care and that patients are getting the best treatment.
Concluding Remarks
The public sector plays a valuable and important role in Australian society often with little credit.Id ask that you never underestimate the importance of the role you play.
And that in responding to the challenges in front of us, that you seek out new and innovative policy responses.
That you show leadership to deliver for the Australian people.
Thank you.
